Why It’s Nice To Walk Home

September 10th, 2010

Even though it’s about a seven and a half mile walk from midtown to my house.  And even though much of it is kind of not so pleasant.  And even though, during the hottest days of summer, I was sweating through my pants and shirt almost immediately.  And even though walking over the Manhattan Bridge can be deafening because of the four trains lines that rumble over the bridge right next to the walkway . . .

Sometimes, while you’re walking over the bridge and that cool breeze coming from the north washes over you, you see a nice moment in time that you only get a minute or two to take in before it’s gone . . . and it makes the whole walk nice.

From The Manhattan Bridge

HAL9000 & the Dream Job

September 9th, 2010

I think HAL has a dreamy job description:

“the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment”

Google Analytics: Weighted Sorts

September 7th, 2010

Good news: it seems that Google Analytics has added a feature called “weighted sorts” to their ever increasing bag of tools they give us for free.

Why is this a good thing? There are probably lots of pages (in many cases, the majority), that aren’t in the top 100 — but, collectively, these pages may do a lot of work on the site.  This helps you compare those pages, in real terms to the pages that are staggeringly popular; it makes smaller data sets comparable to your pages that have many more visits.

This gives you the opportunity to, if nothing else, understand the value of your segments, pages, search terms, et cetera using similar numerical terms. Just as segments are the lens through which you should be examining your data, this is now an indispensable lens to have in your toolbox.

Either way, it’s not an exact science, but it’s better than what you have now, which is nothing.  And, because of how Google Analytics works, it’s not something that you could do yourself (because you don’t have access to every discrete visit which would allow you to weight them).

This is a really great post on the subject that gets into the meat and potatoes of it all. 

There is one issue with the post, however, in that it overemphasizes the value of $index re:weighted sorts.  Yes, it does show that certain pages on a user-per-user basis have a better $index.  Those pages, however, have such a significantly lower amount of traffic, that your next step is questionable; do you take learnings from the better $index page with lower traffic and try and translate them to the lower $index page with higher traffic?  Do you know what those learnings are?  Does the lower trafficked, high $index page perform better because it is very appealing to a small segment that is, by its nature, small?  How does that translate to the larger world of your site?

Anyway, it’s the perennial complaint with analytics which is “now that I see this data, what do I actually know? ” and then “what do I do with that knowledge?”  That’s where analysis and testing come in.  It’s the concert of data, analysis, and testing (and the iteration that you do with all three) that get you to knowledge that you can make actionable.

Google

August 13th, 2010

Sad . . .

The Expandables

July 24th, 2010

I was looking at the poster for the Expendibles in the subway this morning and noticed suspiciously even height amongst the actors in this movie. So I decided to re-size everyone based on their actual heights. There may be some give or take because of perspective, but . . . Dolf Lundgren is still taller than everyone there. Mouse over for the result.

Update: someone just told me that Sly is closer to about 5’6″ and not 5’10” as I had so carelessly googled. I always thought that he was shorter than that . . . shoulda dug further.

Expandable

Search Trail

July 21st, 2010

I searched for myself today and realized two things:

  1. There is only one other person in the country who both has stuff on the internet and has the same name is me.  And he lives in New Jersey.  And he played baseball in college.
  2. The pile of things “about me” on the internet keeps getting longer and longer and longer.  That is, it’s not getting smaller.

About six years ago, I agreed to participate in a documentary about “modern relationships.”  I was still on the edge of thinking that reality television wasn’t so bad and, hey, who wouldn’t want to have their relationship documented, particularly if it ended up being the relationship that ended in marriage, family, and, ultimately, shared death?  It’d be a nice memento.

It did not work out like this.  Almost immediately, I felt this sense of being trapped by what I had said but could not clearly remember having said: there was this sense of “what did I say? I hope I didn’t say it the way that I remember saying it.  Did I actually say that? I hope that doesn’t make it into the final product.”

This, in a sense, is how I feel about the parts of my life that have been indexed by search engines.  I search for them, find them, and while I understand them in the context that they were created, I’m pretty sure that someone else might not.

Anyway, to be fair, one of the other major reasons I didn’t do the documentary was because the guy who was directing it was totally crazy, one time requesting that a friend of mine who made a witty quip repeat it, three times, into the camera:

“Wait, what did you say?!”

“I said, ‘he has a Ph.D. in pussy-whipped.'”

“Say it again! This time on camera!!”

“He has a Ph.D. in pussy-whipped.”

“No, like you said it before!”

“He has a P H D  in pussy-whipped.”

“One more time!”

*sigh*  “He has a Ph.D. in pussy-whipped.”

It was then that I knew the “documentary” wasn’t going to turn out well — like Disney pushing lemmings to their death in the “documentary” White Wilderness.

The Disillusioning World of Sex & the Internet

July 19th, 2010

So, I’ve been working on this site for a client of mine for a while now — looking at stats, designs, user-flows and other ways to improve conversion and retention and just generally trying to enhance their online communications ecosystem.  Their work focuses on all sorts of issues, but mainly those related to democracy, rights, and transparency.

One of them, however, happens to be sex worker’s rights.  Occasionally, we’ll post something to the blog that covers that issue — always interesting and in depth.  What’s interesting (and surprising/not surprising) is that these posts are often quite popular.  They garner many hits a day from people searching for sex and a country or city that’s mentioned in the post.  Virtually no one, however, is searching for “sex worker’s rights.”

We’re thinking about ways to try and pull these people in to see if we can’t convert them into interested members of our audience, but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed on this one.   Without getting into too much detail, part of what’s interesting about this is that it also exposes a kind of weakness in Google’s search.  Without appropriate cross-linking, Google seems to freely associate everything on the page without much regard to contextual relevance.

So a post with a short segment about sex workers worldwide and a riot in Tashkent becomes, in Google’s eyes, a sex worker’s riot in Tashkent.  I guess they’re only SO good.

It Even Looks Hot

July 7th, 2010

Why am I walking home on a 100 degree day?

Green Bay Eating

July 7th, 2010

So I went to Green Bay last weekend and made a point of ordering butterburgers where possible. I have to say, though, overall they weren’t that good. They looked good. They even tasted alright. But they just weren’t enough to justify the added decadence of buttered burger and bun.

Photo that is self-explanatory, below, from the diner known as Kroll’s across the street from Packer’s Lambeau field. One question, though; why is this, of all things, still a regional phenomenon?

List Of 25 Things I Did As A Kid

July 4th, 2010

(UPDATED – 4th of July was fruitful) (UPDATED – August was very fruitful) That I would like to do this summer:

  1. Set off fireworks (done)
  2. Played Euchre (done)
  3. Tried to get a greased watermelon out of a swimming pool.
  4. Went Fishing and caught nothing
  5. Went swimming in my clothes
  6. Swam in a pond (done)
  7. Swam in a lake (done)
  8. Swam in a river (done)
  9. Played around train tracks
  10. Climbed under a train bridge
  11. Got into a water gun fight (done)
  12. Got into a water balloon fight
  13. Played with silly string
  14. Ate pizza at a pizza party (done)
  15. Went to “top of the park” and watched the movie sporadically at best.
  16. Played foursquare
  17. Played “bloody murder”
  18. Played “booger monster”
  19. Played “nummernyots”
  20. Played Super Mario Brothers
  21. Watched any movie that was put in front of me unless it was specifically for adults with mature themes I couldn’t understand.(done)
  22. Lit fireworks when I wasn’t supposed to (done)
  23. Made home-made fireworks from duds (done)
  24. Soldered things that didn’t need truly need any soldering.
  25. Played games and changed the rules while playing depending on how things were going and what team I was on. Everything was a negotiation. Or whining. (done)